


Tomorrow Will Be Kinder

by jjangah (msbutterfingers)



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Domestic Violence, Drabble, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 01:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8037502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msbutterfingers/pseuds/jjangah
Summary: The graveyard is where Jongin goes to escape. To process. To breathe.





	Tomorrow Will Be Kinder

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot about this little drabble for a bit, but I recently found it again and I decided to post it here. 
> 
> I wrote this about 3 years ago, during hard times. The prompt was 'graveyard', from a list of prompts on tumblr from forever ago, and I wrote this with the idea that some places that are sad/lonely can be therapeutic for some, in some ways.

_**tomorrow will be kinder.** _

 

 

_Do Kyungsoo - a beloved son, student, and friend. 1993-2013._  
  
I stared at those numbers, as I always did. No matter how I looked at them, or how long I looked at them, or which direction I read them in, it made no difference. They still made no sense. Six months, and they still didn't make any sense to me.  
  
I've read before that grief usually lasts for a few months, but these months had felt like years. To me, it felt as if this is how life would be from now on.  
  
Everyone continued to tell me to move on, told me to stop coming to his grave everyday. 'It's not healthy,' all of them said. 'It's been months, Jongin. Kyungsoo wouldn't want you to be sad.' I hated when they said that, especially. As if any of them knew how Kyungsoo would feel. None of them knew him like I did.  
  
If he were here, he would sit down next to me with silent patience, and let me feel sad. He wouldn't tell me not to be sad, he wouldn't offer words of fake sympathy, awkwardly pat my back and insist that things would be okay. Out of anyone I knew, he knew the best that sometimes things just aren't okay, and there's nothing you can do to change it. That was one of his best qualities.  
  
He always saw reality for what it was, even though reality was cruel to him. He didn't create an alternate reality, didn't run away, just faced life day by day with his head held high.  
I reached toward the ground in front of his headstone and ripped out a handful of grass, watching as chunks got caught in the wind and blew away.  
  
I remembered the first time he showed up at school with a bruise.  
  
It was when we were still in high school. I had noticed it straight away, especially considering it was on his face and the contrast of it on his pale skin was stark, even a bit startling. When I pointed it out, he didn't attempt to hide it, and when I asked what it was from, he said nothing.  
  
Then one afternoon, after walking him home after school and hearing his stepfather screaming at his mother from the front yard, I pieced it together myself.  
  
"Don't tell, please," he'd said to me. "He said he'd hurt my mom if I said anything."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  
If I had been smarter, less impressionable and braver, I would have told anyway. I would have helped, somehow. I could have found a way.  
The very fact that I didn't would probably haunt me the rest of my life.  
  
Over the years, I wasn't the only one who had noticed. People in Kyungsoo's neighborhood tried to step in, friends of his mother told her to leave her husband, but in the end she had never found the strength to do it.  
  
Now he was in prison for murder.  
  
He murdered my best friend, the one person in this whole world that really understood me. Kyungsoo was my foundation, my strength, my voice when I couldn't speak and my legs when I couldn't walk. He was mine, and I was his.  
  
And now he was gone, and with his absence, there was a hollow, gaping hole in my soul. Maybe it really would always be this way.  
  
Maybe grief was something that people always carry around with them, and it never really goes away. Just becomes quiet and tolerable, a whisper of pain instead of nuclear explosions every time you breathe.  
  
Until then, I would be here. Sitting by his grave in the quiet graveyard, with my shoes kicked off and my toes in the grass. Trying to make sense of the past, of life, of those words inscribed on that headstone.  
  
If I closed my eyes, it was almost like old times. Like when we would sit in the grass in the schoolyard and do homework, or watch people, or talk, or just sit there and enjoy being together. I could almost imagine his voice in my ear, soft and low and calm; almost feel his fingers smoothing across my hand.  
  
Just me and Kyungsoo.


End file.
